Stop the Misery!

Sometimes you just have to go negative in order to make a point. That was my reaction upon reading “How To Feel Miserable as an Artist,” a ten point list that is currently going viral in the arts world. It arrived at my desktop courtesy of Dance Exchange artist Ben Wegman, and I’ve traced it to the blog of artist/author Keri Smith – someone who is new to me, but whose work I definitely plan to check out in greater depth.

Looking over this list I’m struck by how many of these sources of artistic misery stem from two questions: How do we measure success? and What constitutes approval?: Ultimately, while acknowledging all the external forces (family, money, clients, society) that bear on an artist’s sense of self-worth, Keri Smith is clearly preaching that artists need to look within for the final measure of their own value.

What does this mean for critique? Maybe that it’s overvalued. Maybe that artists need to strengthen their own internal voices within the dialogue of criticism. Maybe that we can take nothing for granted in terms of how we measure quality.